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Announcements

Learn about the history of space exploration, the cost of the space program, and the challenges faced in this lecture. Discover why human missions to Mars are difficult, expensive, and dangerous. Find out NASA's plans for the future.

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Announcements

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  1. Announcements • Pick up graded homework. • Pick up handout (“The Virtual Astronaut”) and read over the weekend. • First project due today by 5:00 p.m.

  2. Space Exploration 13 October 2006

  3. Today: • History of space exploration • Cost of the space program • Why it’s difficult, expensive, and dangerous • WARNING: Today’s lecture will contain OPINIONS!

  4. History • 1957: Sputnik 1, first artificial satellite • 1958: Explorer III, first US satellite, discovered radiation belts • 1959: Lunar flyby, landing • 1960: Weather satellite • 1961: Humans in space • 1962: Venus flyby • 1965: Mars flyby • 1969-72: Apollo moon landings • 1973: Jupiter flyby • 1979-89: Voyager flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune • 1982-2010: Space shuttle program • 1990: Hubble Space Telescope deployed • 2000-?: International space station

  5. Apollo Moon Landings

  6. NASA budget

  7. NASA budget

  8. Physics of Space Flight • Low earth orbit: 200 miles high • Gravitational energy is about 3.1 megajoules per kilogram • Required speed: 7.9 km/s (!) • Kinetic energy is 31 MJ/kg • (For comparison, boiling water into steam requires about 2.5 MJ/kg)

  9. Physics of Space Flight • Rocket propulsion is inefficient! Cost of shuttle program: $1.3 billion per launch

  10. Humans vs. Robots • NASA annual budget is about $16 billion • Of this, about half is for human space flight (shuttle, space station); other half is for robotic missions, space telescopes

  11. Why haven’t we gone to Mars? • 140 times farther than the moon (at best) • Months of weightlessness is crippling • Serious radiation hazards • Would have to carry food, fuel, oxygen to last years • Taking earth life to Mars could confuse search for native Martian life • So much to learn from unmanned exploration!

  12. The Outer Solar System Neptune On this scale: 1 A.U. = 7 pixels Orbital radii: Jupiter 5.2 A.U. Saturn 9.5 A.U. Uranus 19 A.U. Neptune 30 A.U. Uranus Saturn Jupiter

  13. The Inner Solar System Mars Earth On this scale: 1 A.U. = 120 pixels Diam. of Sun = 1 pixel Diam. of moon’s orbit = 1/2 pixel Diam. of earth = 1/100 pixel Venus Mercury Sun

  14. Earth and Moon to scale

  15. Low-Earth orbit

  16. Low-Earth orbit

  17. NASA’s future plans

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